Comments on: Thoughts (pt 3) on Rules of Play – categorizing rules

By: Trevor

Trevor — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:52:26 +0000

We were talking about the imbalance in performance in chess based on who goes first. Other imbalances in chess (taken from Jeremy Silman’s books):
Superior minor piece
Pawn structure
Space
Material
Control of a key file or square
Lead in development
Initiative
A simplified version of Silman’s thesis is that once you create an imbalance in one of these areas you can convert it into a different imbalance or work it into a won game. If you view chess by only looking at the material, you miss the depth of the game.
Rules ought to allow a variety of imbalances to occur in game play to accommodate more than one winning strategy.

By: Thoughts (pt 4) on Rules of Play - digital games « f i c i a l

Thoughts (pt 4) on Rules of Play - digital games « f i c i a l — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:56:59 +0000

[...] of games and then get back to digital games. Consider the two rule implementations Tic Tac Toe and 3-to-15 (towards the bottom of the post). You could then ask “is that rule set a math and memory game or a territory control [...]

By: ficial

ficial — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:44:12 +0000

The book hasn’t gotten to this topic yet, and when it does I’m sure I’ll have more to say on the matter. In the mean time here are soe brief thoughts on the matter…

Who goes first is always a tricky question. Some games avoid the question entirely by having players move simultaneously. Others get players to negotiate a fair price (e.g. bidding for the right to go first, where the bid winner gets to go first but has their bid amount subtracted from their final score). Others try to assign some fixed value (e.g. in Go the second mover gets a 6.5 point bonus (Komi) added to their final score – the .5 point breaks ties). Others use a round-robin system (e.g. the tournament chess matches you describe).

When I design games I generally try to balance the first move advantage against some other aspect of the game (whether its a simple point bonus a la Go, some sort of positional advantage, an information advantage, or something else). I’m also a fan of simultaneous movement games (for other reasons besides the first-mover issue, but dealing with that is a not-insignificant side benefit). Real-time games can also deal with it, though not all do. One can also largely get around the problem with un-even forces games (where players each have a mostly separate set of rules by which they play). Separating the end conditions from the win/loss conditions can help, though it usually doesn’t do the trick in itself. As a last resort I’d use a match-based or duplicate-based system.

Determining the exact magnitude of a first-mover advantage can be very tricky and is often more a matter of statistics than deduction – e.g. In chess the first mover has a 10% advantage which is deduced by looking at large numbers of game results, but that would be incredibly hard to predict from the rules (it’s pretty easy to predict there’s some advantage, but very hard to predict how much). The games I’ve designed haven’t received that much play, so sometimes the best I can do is build in some kind of easily adjustable parameter, take a guess at a vaguely appropriate value, and assume that if and when enough games are played to figure out a better value then it will get changed.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:16:19 +0000

It seems that an important operational consideration is determining which player gets to go first. I wonder how much this factor affects popular games. I only know about chess. In chess, the player with the white pieces gets the first move. In all recorded games, white wins about 55% of the time. On the other hand, the player with the Black pieces has the advantage of having one move more information about White’s plans. This doesn’t seem like much at first, but when you try taking a highly successful defense as played by Black and try it with White, it often doesn’t work, even with the extra move! Black will see what is coming and make the famed opening ineffective. That is probably why white only wins 55% of the time. In chess tournaments, players alternate colors each game and there is more than a few pages of the official rules of chess that discuss assigning due colors. World Chess Championships are determined by matches with the players alternating colors each game. Getting to go first is a big deal.

What do Salen and Zimmerman have to say about who goes first?
If you are a game designer, how to you minimize the advantage of the player who goes first?